Speaking as someone who works in the US healthcare industry - this scenario sounds awfully familiar. I can see why some offices charge for no-shows.
I can too.
Although there’s also the other side of the coin, where you show up for a 10.00 a.m. appointment, and two hours into the work day the doctor is already running 45 minutes behind. I recognize that doctors can’t predict the exact nature and severity and difficulty of every patient they’re going to see, but it sometimes seems that doctors’ appointment schedules bear absolutely no relation whatsoever to the realities of their profession.
And if a doctor habitually keeps you waiting half and hour or 45 minutes after your appointed time, you’d probably be pretty annoyed if they then wanted to charge you for a single no-show.
We experience this, too. The self-pay people almost always call to cancel, the Medicaid ones rarely bother. It’s no money out of their pockets.
Fuck employer-based health insurance. Fuck it!
So, husband was laid off and lost his health insurance. Have been trying to get him added to my health insurance plan, but we’ve run into some snags and delays as a result of a change in his insurance provider just shortly before he was laid off. Long story short, after providing two separate Certificates of Prior Coverage and being told his coverage would be retroactive to October 1, it will be at least a week before any claims or verification will be processed by the insurer.
Of course, this is would be the exact time my otherwise healthy husband develops a painful abdominal hernia and his primary care physician advises him to come into the office immediately. (He called ahead to explain the insurance situation and asked if it was absolutely necessary to come in, considering we aren’t in any position to incur extraneous medical bills.) Great.
After explaining the situation, again, to the billing clerk, it’s concluded that they will have to process the claim immediately, understanding that it’s going to get denied because the insurance company doesn’t show him as covered until they process the changes. The billing person assures me they will resubmit the claim. I assure them that according to my benefits admin, he will be covered. They verify that the insurance provider does not require a pre-certification for a consult, which brings me to…
Oh, if it only ended there. So, the primary care doc’s diagnosis is incarcerated hernia (it’s right above his navel) and refers him immediately to a surgeon. Except the billing department cannot verify his insurance, even after being told that the paperwork is currently being processed and the coverage will be retroactive, but the does not reflect in the provider’s system today. The clerk says, “But today is October 29???” Well, yes, which means that any claims for care provided today will be covered…as soon as the insurance company finishes processing. “But we can’t verify coverage.” Yes, we went over this. I offer to put them on the phone with my employer’s (a large corporation) health benefits administrator to verify that the coverage changes are underway. Nope, they don’t want to talk to our benefits admin. We will have to self-pay “at a discount.” Really? How much is this going to cost? “Oh, about $200.” (I was impressed with such a quick reply–wonder if she was guessing, considering he hadn’t even been seen by anyone other than the office jockeys.) Would that we, an unemployed technician and a retail clerk, had that $200 to spare. Alas, I have rent, utilities and food to buy.
Husband called back the primary care doc back and they decide he can wait until the insurance changes go through – hopefully within the week, barring anymore snags – unless he becomes violently ill or blacks out, in which case he should go to the ER immediately.
Fuckers.
I changed doctors after I got scheduled for an 8:30 appointment one morning, only to learn that the doc himself wasn’t scheduled to show up until 10:30 or so. Now, if I’d needed to fill out paperwork or get some labwork done, fine, I can understand that. At least the paperwork part. But what if the doc wants more labwork? I don’t want to get stuck TWICE, thankyouverymuch.
I did shock one receptionist, though. We had one of our rare snowstorms last winter, and I showed up for my appointment about 15 minutes early. Apparently one other person had shown up that day. She’d brought donuts, and kept urging me to take another. I did take one, but had to refuse the rest. So, so hard to resist.
Now, maybe the doctor didn’t know about this scheduling. But someone screwed up, and this wasn’t the first time that I’d had to wait for hours for the doctor to see me, and the waiting room was always full of patients.
I quit going to my previous Chiropractor after having been kept waiting for over an hour over my lunch break. I chose him at the time because he was 10 minutes from where I worked and I could go there on my lunch hour and generally get back within my lunch time. Then things started getting worse and I would be delayed as he was late getting to me. The last straw was that they scheduled a New Patient for 15 minutes before me. New patients took him better than an hour to process and go through everything, so I was completely ignored. After the hour, I walked up to the front desk, totally steamed that HEY, I’M ON MY LUNCH BREAK HERE. The front desk person apologised and offered to reschedule. I said no and walked out. I later got a call apologizing and saying they knew they should have scheduled the other person for a full hour and asking me to come back, but by that time I’d had enough of that and the constant circle of “come back in 2 days” and never really fixing the issues.
My new guy is so good he has a waiting list for new patients over a year long, schedules appointments two months in advance, and generally fixes issues on the first visit.
We have ongoing, chronic, serious problems here with not enough doctors and horrendous wait times, but some offices are definitely better than others. My current doctor doesn’t make me wait much at all. Other doctors in the past have had me waiting about an hour for a scheduled appointment. I always assumed in the past that waiting for an appointment was just business as usual; I know better now. My current doctor’s office is very busy; they’re just better at scheduling. (And they’re within walking distance, too -SCORE!).
Saturday, but I normally work Tuesday to Saturday.
Day 3 (plus) of Teh Sick. I woke up twice in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat. One of those times with stabbing pains in my abdomen that fortunately, did not last long. Called in one more time this morning. Now I get to wash my sheets again. Had oatmeal for supper last night because I didn’t think I could eat anything else. Had some turkey and mashed potatoes this morning because that stuff is relatively easy on the gut.
I’d be thinking this would be something worse than just an intestinal virus, but the tests they did run showed all my numbers normal. Bad intestinal bug! Bad! Bad!
I’d like to issue a hearty FUCK YOU to the US Postal Service for losing two “Priority Mail” packages. I ordered a comic book at the beginning of October; thinking it would be silly to spend so much on shipping via UPS, I opted for Priority Mail. Big mistake, since the package never arrived and I had no means of tracking it! The company declared it missing this week, and shipped a replacement that should have arrived yesterday. I’m going to reorder the comic book Monday, and have it shipped UPS. (I had originally thought that someone in the neighborhood had stolen the comic, or that it had simply been misdelivered. Now I’ve decided that the postal service is just incompetent.)
During this election season, i renew my rage against robocallers, and reiterate my argument that charities and political parties should be covered by the Do Not Call list.
We must have had a dozen calls in the last couple of days, for everything from the US Sentae race to the local School Board to Prop 23.
Oh, for fuck’s sake! I have two, count 'em, TWO jury-duty summonses on my desk – one for county court on Monday, and one for municipal petit court in December. AND I’ve already served on a jury this year. Call someone else, jury jerkoffs!
But that’s precisely the point of my rant: i can’t sue the people who have been calling me, because the calls are not coming from for-profit businesses, but rather from candidates for political office and from non-profit groups seeking political support. Those groups are all specifically exempt from the Do Not Call legislation.
How do you have these conversations that you’re supposed to record with a pre-recorded message? You know, a robocall.
I get those on my cell phone from some wacko church in Texas. It’s a pre-recorded message of some hellfire preacher type literally screaming something mostly incoherent. I still haven’t figured out WTH they’re trying to get me to do. I have filed several complaints and included my number on the DNC list. It hasn’t stopped and there doesn’t seem to be a way to make it stop.
Sorry everyone. Brain dead here. For some reason I’m thinking robocall just means that the calls are dialed automatically. Normally you’ll get 2 or 3 of these and a disconnect until they understand someone is answering the phone and then you at least get a shot at talking to something that at least passes for human.
I thought pre-recorded messages were even more illegal though - no? There’s got to be some cash in those too I would think/hope, but IDK.
I don’t have the patience for it but apparently some people do actually make a nice bit of cash on the side.
I very mildly pit British Trick-or-Treaters for not carrying loot bags. First of all I’m running out of candy, so you don’t really need to know that I only put two candies in your bag instead of 3 or 4 like I would have at the beginning of the night. And since I am running out, I’m down to the Christmas Quality Street candy and I don’t really need you to to be so picky/judgemental about what I’m giving you! Both of these sins are hard to hide if I have to put it into your hand for inspection.
I like Quality Street chocolates - are they inferior chocolate? I’m giving out bad candy this year - turns out that takes a lot of stress out of giving it, because I don’t care about anything related to it (give out huge handfuls, put out a bowl with a sign saying, “Help Yourself,” whatever). Kids need to learn that life will give you Hallow Mallows and gummy body parts, not just chocolate. 
Math doesn’t lend itself to the Socratic method, but if you insist on using it because you’re a numbnut, you need to let the students prepare the problems BEFOREHAND. Otherwise you just have a bunch of grad students scribbling in their notes trying to solve the problem after the one you’re currently talking about in case they get called on next.
Also, the Socratic method is not a way to avoid doing prep. It doesn’t work if you keep badgering a student who shuts down. We’re grad students, for fuck’s sake. We’re not trying to avoid the work.
And you’re posting “your” lecture notes online anyway, and handing them out at the beginning of class.
So fucking post them the night before and let us solve them out so we don’t spend 20 minutes on a proof everyone understands and then 20 minutes interrogating a student who has admitted she doesn’t understand the proof. If you ask her to explain the construct of a proof and she gives a wrong answer, saying things like “But be more bureaucratic!” or “Now give me the final nail in the coffin!” isn’t going to develop an understanding.
In conclusion, people who don’t understand the basis of the Socratic method shouldn’t attempt to implement it.
I pit our next-door neighbors for letting their little kids (4-ish boy and 2-ish girl) out into the yard to run around screaming before dawn. I know the little tykes have a lot of energy and all, but for the love of all that’s holy, is wanting you to keep the noisy things inside until sunrise too much to ask?
That goes double - no, triple - on the weekends. Been awoken just before dawn by screeching the last several mornings, through earplugs no less, which is no mean feat.
bends down on one knee, puts on high-pitched condescending voice
Kids, I know you’re having fun an’ all, but why do you have to sound like you’re being raped? While other people are trying to sleep?